Is LegalZoom a Good Idea? Do the Legal Documents Work?

I have major mixed feelings about LegalZoom.

I’m not going to lie, I am mighty impressed by the business acumen of the lawyers who started LegalZoom. Generally speaking, lawyers are the worst business people, but not these guys. They are smart.

And, I’m pretty impressed that the’ve got the American public thinking about proactive legal planning for their businesses and their families. It’s a great first start considering that 69% of you haven’t even named guardians for your kids!

What concerns me though is that people are relying on legal documents alone and not getting legal guidance and they think everything is good to go, when it’s often not.

The truth of the matter is that oftentimes creating your own legal documents provides a false sense of security and the breach is only discovered when it’s too late to do anything about it.

It’s kind of like if you built your own house during the summer when the weather was really good and you thought you knew what you were doing, but unknowingly overlooked a key element like putting waterproof felt between the sheeting and the shingles (who would know that, I thought you’d just put the shingles right on the wood).

You might not find out right away that you had overlooked this important item, but a couple years later the sheeting would start to rot away and by the third winter you’d have rain and snow in your house and by the time you figured out what you had done wrong, it’d be too late to do anything about it.

It’s the same with do it yourself estate planning, really.

It will seem really easy and as if you’ve done everything your supposed to do. And, you’ll go through your life thinking that you’ve done a really good thing for your family or your business. But then, a crisis will come, like a lawsuit, hospitalization or even worse, a death. And your family will be scrambling to figure out what to do and quite often, they’ll find out they’re screwed by something simple, but integral, you overlooked.

Like not titling the ownership of your house properly. Or, not signing the bylaws for your corporation. Or not issuing the share certificates. Or, not signing your Will properly. Something that seems dumb, but is super easy to miss. Even for lawyers.

Sadly enough, it doesn’t only happen when you do it yourself; this false sense of security can happen when you work with a lawyer too. In fact, most estate plans in place today are in grave danger of failing. My own father-in-law spent thousands of dollars on an estate plan and we ended up in Court probating his Estate anyway.

I’ll tell you more about what happened and what to look for in your own estate plan to make sure that doesn’t happen to your family next week.

In the meantime, if you are going to do it yourself, take this advice:

1. Get whatever you do reviewed by a lawyer. It’s better to know than to wonder.  Contact a Personal Family Lawyer to review your Do It Yourself Legal Documents (Suze Orman Will & Trust Kit, LegalZoom, Trust on the Web, any of them) and if you use certificate code DIY, they’ll waive the $950 existing plan review and consultation fee.

2. Make sure you do the whole job, not just part of it. For example, if you incorporate yourself, don’t think filing documents with the State alone is the final step - you need corporate operating documents, you need to issue stock or membership interests, you need contracts and board resolutions, meeting minutes and a registered agent. If you don’t have all of these things (and more) your personal assets are not protected from your business risks.
3. If you have kids, make sure you’ve adequately provided for their care.  Most do it yourself legal products (and lawyers themselves for that matter) don’t adequately plan for the things parents really care about.  For less than $15, my book “Wear Clean Underwear! A Fast, Fun, Friendly - and Essential - Guide to Legal Planning for Busy Parents” will guide you to exactly what you need to do and help you fix whatever you may have done wrong.

Doing something is better than nothing, but doing something wrong and thinking everything has been taken care of is the worst of all.

What Is Family Wealth Planning?

Family Wealth Planning is the Web 2.0 version of estate planning.

Whereas “estate planning” is about preparing and passing on your financial assets at the end of your life, Family Wealth Planning is about making the right financial and legal decisions for your whole family wealth throughout your lifetime and leaving the world a better place after you are gone.

It’s about capturing the assets that are most often lost when someone dies … the intellectual, spiritual and human assets that make up a great majority of our family’s wealth and passing them on as well.

When my dad died, he left behind a bit of money, but the rest of his wealth was lost, uncaptured.

I have no letters from him or recordings talking about his hopes and dreams for my future.  My children will never hear his voice or know what was important to him.

I suspect it is the same for your family.

And while there are gobs of websites and businesses springing up to help people capture these assets and pass them on, in my experience we are just too busy and it rarely gets done.

I’ve found the best way to make sure this happens is to make it part of your legal planning.  When you are working with a lawyer on your family’s “estate” planning, if your lawyer is only preparing a plan to pass on your financial assets, he or she is only doing 1/4 of the job.

What you want is a lawyer who will help you capture the wealth that is most often lost and most difficult to plan for … your intellectual, spiritual and human assets or who you are and what’s important to you.

Through a simple Family Wealth Legacy Interview process at the end of your planning together, your Personal Family Lawyer will help you capture the most valuable family wealth you have and pass that on for successive generations by building a legacy library that will be far more valuable than any dollars you could ever leave behind.

How Much Life Insurance Do You REALLY Need?

Quite frequently when I’m working with clients, I am asked the question - how much life insurance do I need?

Like any good lawyer, my answer is “it depends.” There’s no set answer.

Personally, I have $1,500,000 on my life. And, by the way, it’s not payable to my kids or my ex if something happens to me. My life insurance is payable to a trust for the benefit of my kids that they wouldn’t get control over until they are mature. But, the money never comes out of the Trust. It stays in protected from potential lawsuits and divorces they may later be involved in. You should do this too.

Ok, so what does the “how much” decision depend on?

Well, it depends on how much you’d want your loved ones to have after you are gone and what their needs would be.

You can use the nifty calculator here, which will help you calculate how much your loved ones would need after you are gone.

I hear a lot of people say they want enough insurance to pay off their home if their spouse died, but that’s not necessarily the best use of insurance money. You absolutely do want to make sure there would be enough money coming in to support the mortgage payments, property taxes, and maintenance of the house, but paying off the house isn’t always the best idea.

A house payment has tax advantages and a paid off house is a lot of money just sitting there not earning any return on your investment. In a low interest rate environment, it’s better to have the mortgage and invest the money in income producing assets.

I strongly recommend that you don’t make any of these sorts of decisions without the guidance of a trusted family advisor. And, I personally believe that the best advisor for your family is a Personal Family Lawyer who is totally on your side and will help you to make the best decisions throughout life and then be there for your family when you can’t be.

What Kind of Life Insurance Do You Really Need?

I get massively ticked off when I meet with prospects for a Family Wealth Planning Session and see on their Family Wealth Inventory and Assessment they’ve been sold life insurance they don’t need.

Life insurance is critically important for families, no doubt.

But, it’s important you get the right type of life insurance for your family; otherwise, you are pouring your hard earned money into the pockets of your life insurance agent.

That makes me angry as a hornet!

Here’s the real deal, objective, hardcore information you need before you make a life insurance buying decision for your family.

There are two main types of life insurance: term insurance and permanent insurance.

Within the permanent insurance category, they are many subsets, including Variable, Universal, Whole Life, and a few others that are a combination of those I just listed. You can find the definitions of each of these here, if you really care.

Truly though, most of you shouldn’t really care. Because very few of you reading this need permanent insurance.

You almost certainly need term insurance and if you don’t have it, you should get it now. The younger the better because it gets more expensive as you age. I got a $1,000,000 policy at the age of 28 that cost me about $440/year.  That same policy just three years later would have cost me double that.

Term insurance provides death benefit in a “face amount” (I have a total $1,500,000 of death benefit on my life for my kids) so long as you pay your premiums each year.

The premium payments will stay level for the term of the insurance, which could be 10, 20 or 30 years, depending on your contract. After that, if you wanted to continue the insurance, it would likely be cost-prohibitive for you to do so (unless you get a type of term insurance called convertible-term, which is generally more expensive, but allows you to convert it to  permanent policy during the term agreement).  With a term policy, there is no cash value build up - so, if you pay $1000 in a year and you don’t die in that year, that’s it, the $1,000 is gone.

Permanent insurance, in contrast, is a lot more expensive. For example, that same million dollar policy that costs me $440/year could cost $440/month if it was for a permanent policy.

The extra premium goes into an investment account that builds up cash value, which sounds really nice, BUT has some real downsides, including you have no control over this investment account and huge amounts of it are eaten up by commissions to your insurance agent in the first year, so you are starting your investment in the hole big time and have a lot of ground to make up before it will even come close to comparing to taking that money and putting it in a traditional investment account.

Commissions are worth it if you NEED permanent insurance, but are a waste of your hard-earned cash, if you don’t.  There is only one condition under which permanent insurance makes sense for your family - if you absolutely MUST have insurance at the time of your death.

There are only 2 situations in which you absolutely MUST have life insurance at the time of your death. They are:

1. Your family will need the insurance to pay estate taxes at your death. You are only at risk of estate taxes (today) if you have more than $2,000,000 in assets. If you have less, don’t worry about it yet.

2. Someone will be dependent on you at the time of your death and you may not have enough in retirement accounts, savings or other assets to provide for that person at the time of your death.

Let’s talk a little bit more about the 2nd situation and look at some examples because if you have a potential estate tax issue, you probably know it. But, you may be uncertain as to whether you need permanent insurance to provide for dependents.

If you are married and both partners are breadwinners and you have healthy, minor children - you don’t need permanent insurance. Term insurance that lasts for 10, 20 or even 30 years (depending on the age of your minor children and your desire to provide for them into their 20s) is sufficient. If you or your partner died after the expiration of your term, you kids could provide for themselves and your partner could continue working.

If you are married and both partners are breadwinners and you have a special needs child - you might need permanent insurance, but you might not. If you have a special needs child who will need financial care forever and you will not have enough money put away in a Special Needs Trust through your own savings or gifts from other family members to provide for that care, you may want to consider a permanent insurance policy to fund that Trust for your child.

If you are married and one of you is a stay at home spouse and is not likely to ever enter the workforce - you may want to consider permanent insurance to provide for the lifetime financial needs of the non-employed spouse, if you won’t have enough in savings or retirement to provide for the lifetime needs of the non-earning spouse if the earner spouse dies prematurely, but after the term insurance would expire.

To make this one a little more concrete, let’s look at an all too common example in which breadwinner husband dies in his late 50s or early 60s after his term insurance has expired but before he’s got enough in savings or retirement to support stay at home wife who has been out of the workforce raising their kids for the past 30 years and is now left with not enough resources to support her for the next 30 years and no real prospects for supporting herself financially.

Personally, I’d rather see this scenario avoided by ensuring that each spouse in a marriage always has the capacity to earn a living by working together to build a business that would support either spouse with passive income later in life, but if that’s not realistic for your family, permanent insurance may be a necessary solution.

Bottom line?

Term insurance unless you know you are going to need insurance when you die to pay estate taxes (in which case the insurance should be owned in an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust) or some type of permanent insurance if you want to guarantee to have some coverage in place for a non wage-earner spouse or special needs child no matter what age you are when you die.

Next week we’ll talk about how to decide how much life insurance is right for your family.

One of Your Family Member’s Stole $300,000 From You

A few days ago, I got an email from my cousin asking me whether I wanted to hear about how one of my family members stole $300,000 from me and my sister.

Let me start at the beginning …

About a month ago, my grandmother (Nana) died in Florida. Nana was my dad’s mom and I didn’t have much of a relationship with her because of an estrangement between her and my father before his death.

My father had a sister and a brother, both of whom were close to their mother, but I wasn’t entirely surprised there wasn’t any plans for a memorial service. And, truthfully, I was a little relieved because I’d have felt obligated to fly to Florida even though I haven’t been particularly close with my dad’s family … she WAS my grandmother.

Although I didn’t expect an inheritance from Nana, I did have a fleeting thought about a Will and whether Nana had included my dad.

But, it was fleeting. I didn’t think much about it.

Until …. two weeks ago. When I got the email from my cousin about the stolen 300,000 dollars. (It was interesting to note that before I saw my cousin’s email, I literally didn’t think twice about an inheritance, but once he suggested I “should have” received something, my mind couldn’t stop thinking about it and wanted to find any way possible that I would be entitled to that money, regardless of whether I was or wasn’t. Fortunately, I haven’t let my mind suck me into the game too much. I wasn’t expecting anything, though it’d sure be nice!)

Anyway, it turns out there WAS a Will prepared by Nana in 1993, leaving a specific piece of property to be divided evenly between my dad and his brother.

My uncle expected to receive this property, which would have been split with me and my sister, as my dad’s heirs, thus the 300,000 my cousin referenced in his email.

Despite the Will and my uncle’s expectation, nana had apparently quit claimed the property to my aunt before her death, nullifying the gift in the Will. And, my aunt sold the property without telling my nana or anyone else in the family!

As you might imagine, my uncle and his family are confused and can’t understand what happened or why.

Upon my uncle’s inquiry to my aunt and her family, they got very defensive, would provide no information, insisted everything had been done legally and if my uncle had a problem with it, he could get a lawyer.

The trouble is, no one knows what my Nana really wanted.  Up until she died, she’d been telling my uncle he’d be taken care of; he’s totally confused and doesn’t know where to turn other than to place blame on his sister who ended up with all the assets.

It’s possible my Nana was afraid to tell my uncle that she was giving everything to my aunt.  It’s possible Nana didn’t know what she was doing too.  The truth will never be completely known now.  It’s too late.

My nana’s failure to tell everyone what she wanted before her death has now caused a massive rift in the family that likely will never be healed.

Don’t do this to your family.

Clearly communicate your wishes before it’s too late. Make sure all your children know in advance what you want to happen if you become incapacitated or after you are gone. Leave your family with the gift of a Personal Family Lawyer who will be there for your family after you are gone and make sure everyone knows exactly what you wanted.

There will be no fighting, no confusion, no wondering why.  Your loved ones deserve that.

ABC News article confirms why your estate plan is likely to fail

Last week, I was contacted by Alice Gomstyn, a reporter from ABC News who was writing a story about Heath Ledger, who as you’ll recall from my article last week, died with an out of date Will that didn’t mention his daughter Matilda.

Alice’s article confirms what I’ve been saying all along … most lawyers are shockingly clueless when it comes to building meaningful relationships with their clients and making sure their clients’ estate plans will work when their families need them.

Attorney David A. Looney, a lawyer in Akron, Ohio, quoted in the article sadly represents the vast majority of lawyers out there who claim to have relationships with their clients, but when you look a little deeper what you really find is the mere preparation of form documents and nothing more.

It’s left up to the client to contact their lawyer when changes happen in their life or the law and as we’ve seen with Anna Nicole and Heath Ledger that far too often doesn’t happen.

I am keenly aware of this not only because my father in law died with an estate plan that left his assets owned improperly, but because I saw it in my own law practice when I first launched my business.

I’d talk a lot about relationship with my clients, but when I gave my business a good hard look, there was no relationship to be found - my clients signed their documents, took them home and didn’t think about estate planning again.

Once I realized this, I vowed to change it.

Personal Family Lawyers send out a monthly newsletter, this weekly online magazine and review their clients’ plans at least every three years.  All this so you don’t have to worry that the planning you spent thousands of dollars on won’t work.

And, most excitingly, we launched our Family Wealth VIP Membership program so clients could really have an ongoing relationship with their personal lawyer without having to worry about hourly fees.

What does this mean?

For clients who participate in our membership program, we review the plan annually instead of every three years and changes to the plan are made at no charge. Plus, we update our clients Family Wealth Inventory annually to ensure that none of the assets end up in the state Department of Unclaimed Property because they are overlooked after death or forced to go through the long, expensive, and unnecessary probate process because they were not titled properly.

Most excitingly, clients on our membership program are able to call us whenever there’s any event in their life that has legal or financial implications and not worry about getting a bill in the mail weeks later.  We are able to be our clients’ true personal lawyer for life.

As we say, it’s like having a lawyer in the family.  And, it’s one of the most critical relationships you can have if you are serious about building wealth and leaving your family with the guidance of someone you trust after you are gone.

Why Every Adult Needs to Plan!

Another sad case of a woman on life support who didn’t do any estate planning. Deanna Suzanne Fruggiero is only 31 and not married, so she probably didn’t think it was important. Now, her divorced parents are fighting over who will make decisions about her care. Every adult over the age of 18 must have an Advance Health Care Directive/Living Will in place to state what should happen in this situation. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it because it’s a gift to the people you love!

The Rich Get Richer - Why Not You?

Monday’s Wall St. Journal article Market Turmoil Creates Opening to Enrich Heirs
highlighted one way the current downturn in the market can be a huge opportunity for the wealthy. This is a fantastic time for you to pass assets on to your heirs at a major discount.

For those of you who aren’t facing estate taxes yet, there’s loads of other opportunities to capitalize on now that will make it more likely that estate taxes will be one of the good problems you have to worry about.

As Seth Godin points out “change (and the fortunes that go with it) is almost always made during the down part of the cycle. It might not be fun, but it’s exciting. (Where do you think Google came from?) The opportunity is to find substantial opportunities (in any field) that deliver real value and have a future. Those jobs/investments/companies/ideas are undervalued right now, but not for long.”

So stop worrying so much about the big, bad recession and whether the market is a bear market or not and start focusing on how you can get yourself into the group of people who can take advantage of the next downturn in a big, bad way yourself.

In fact, why not think about what to do with that tax rebate you’ve got coming?

Here’s some ideas:

1.  Invest In Yourself

If you haven’t already, get your financial house in order by meeting with a Personal Family Lawyer, conducting a Family Wealth Inventory and Assessment and giving yourself and your loved ones the gift of knowing you are making the right financial and legal decisions during life and everything will be taken care of if anything happens to you.

2.  Invest In Your Business

If you are a business owner, this is the time to invest more in your business, not less.  Many people will go out of business during a recession because they get scared and stop investing in their marketing.  This is the time to do more, not less.  Get creative and get going.

3.  Invest in Your Family

If you aren’t a business owner and you’ve got your estate planning in place and up to date, then check out these ways you can invest in your family: max out your 401(k), open up a 529 plan for your kid or fund a retirement account for your kid under 18 who is employed even just a little bit.

Whatever you do - invest it in your future and be one of the rich who get richer this time around.

Heath Ledger Estate Planning Out of Date and No Mention of Daughter Matilda or Her Mother Michelle Williams in Will

Once again, another celebrity has died with an out-of-date Will. Heath Ledger’s Will has been made public (as all Wills are public documents after death) and it turns out that the Will, made three years prior to his daughter’s birth, leaves everything to his parents and sister.

We saw the same thing recently when Anna Nicole Smith died and her Will left everything to her deceased son, made no mention of her baby daughter Danielynn or her long-time life/love partner Howard K. Stern, who stuck by her through all of her ups and downs for years prior to her death.Heath’s parents have publicly assured that Matilda will be well taken care of and she’s likely to be deemed a pretermitted heir or omitted heir anyway, which would mean she’ll end up inheriting Heath’s estate and a Los Angeles Court has established Dannielynn as Anna Nicole’s sole heir, so in the end the kids will be taken care of but those results only tell part of the story.

First off, neither Michelle Williams, Matilda’s mother, nor Howard K. Stern, Anna Nicole’s long-time partner, were provided for and the law doesn’t make any provision for unmarried partners.   Would Heath and Anna really have wanted Michelle and Howard to get nothing?

Second, while Matilda and Dannielynn will ultimately inherit from their parents due to the pretermitted heir laws noted above, Heath and Anna lost out on the chance to decide the terms under which their babies would receive the money they left behind and to name who would take care of that money until the received it.

These incidents are indicative of a greater national problem that exists - the current model for providing legal services in the United States is desperately broken!

Even wealthy celebrities are victim of the current mindset that estate planning is about form documents that can be prepared once and never looked at again. As these cases highlight, that’s incorrect.

The truth of the matter is that estate planning really has very little to do with form documents. Think about this: standard estate planning form documents can be purchased on the internet for a couple hundred bucks, completed with the help of a do it yourself kit for only $13.50 or you could spend $2,750 to have the forms prepared for you by an Arizona lawyer who calls himself the Estate Planning Doctor.

Here’s the amazing thing . . . whether you spend $13.50 or $2,750.00, at the end of the day all you end up with is documents that in many cases won’t work when your family needs them.

What you want when it comes to estate planning is not a set of form documents. What you want is a relationship with a personal lawyer who is going to guide you to make the best decision throughout your lifetime, be there for your family when you can’t be, and make sure your estate plan stays up to date so when you have a new baby, they know about it, the baby gets added to your plan and your plan works when your family needs it.

© 2008 Alexis Martin Neely

Estate Planning? But I’m only 35! Secrets of the Old Rich Guys Revealed

Unless you were born into an Über-rich family (and sometimes even then), your parents’ probably never discussed estate planning when you were growing up and didn’t have any kind of relationship with a personal lawyer (at least not one you remember discussed with fondness!)

It’s not a surprise.  70% of people die without even a Will.  So, why would you need to take action now, when you are so young?

Because you are financially smarter than your parents and you care more about the people you’d leave behind than the 70% who die leaving their loved ones in the lurch.

You may be young (or young at heart), but you likely have more far more wealth than your folks already; you certainly have bigger dreams, and there’s a good chance you have kids.

It’s not your age that matters when it comes to planning.  Your vision and your family circumstances determine whether you need to plan and when to start.

Regardless of how much money you have in the bank, if you have kids at home, you want to be the one who decides who would take care of your kids in the short-term and who would raise them for the long-term, if you were in an accident.  You definitely don’t want to leave that up to a court to decide.

Choosing who will take care of your kids and legally documenting your decisions is estate planning … if you have kids, you need it.

If you do have money in the bank (here in California more than $100,000) or own any real property, you will want that money to get to your family as easily as possible if anything happens to you.  The State has a plan for your money, but it’s one that will make life difficult for your loved ones.  Under the State’s plan, your family will have to deal with the Court, not have complete control of your assets for 12-16 months and they’ll pay a load of unnecessary expenses that you could have avoided if you had planned ahead.

You definitely don’t want to leave the people you love with a mess because you didn’t take care of things.

Giving your loved ones easy access to your money if you are in an accident is estate planning … if you have money in the bank or own even one piece of real estate, you need it.

And, if you have a big vision for your future, you want to set up your business in such a way that it can never be taken from you if you get divorced or sued and so that when you die, your family won’t lose half of it to the government.   Yes, there are ways to totally protect what you are building and they are a lot easier to put in place when your company isn’t worth much, like when you are just starting out in your 30s.

Showing the Universe you mean business about your business and setting it up so that it grows protected for your family is estate planning … if you have a big vision for your future, you need it.

Last, if you want to pass on much more than just your financial wealth and leave the world a better place, you need to set forth the intention to do that and then take action steps throughout your lifetime to capture the intangible assets that are most often lost when someone dies, like your intellectual, spiritual and human assets.  It’s about who you are and what’s important to you.

Creating a structure and plan for passing on your values, insights, stories and experience is estate planning …. If you want to leave the world a better place, you need it.

So, what do the old rich guys know that you
should know too?

The most important thing to know is that estate planning is really NOT a do it yourself process.

Sure, you can prepare your own will, trust or health care directive, but real deal, make a difference for your loved ones estate planning (what I call Family Wealth Planning) is about far more than documents; it’s about making the very best decisions for yourself and the people you love most so you can leave the world a better place.  And that kind of estate planning cannot be done without the guidance of a trusted personal lawyer to be there for you throughout your lifetime and for your loved ones after you are gone.

Think about the old rich guys …. the guys whose family wealth has grown at each generation –Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford to name a few – all had personal lawyers advising them and their family after they were gone and long before they amassed their wealth.  Because of these relationships, they left long lasting legacies that improve the world.  Contrast that with rich guys like Joe Robbie, Powel Crosley, Jr., and Cornelius Vanderbilt who were once the wealthiest men in America and whose fortunes have been almost entirely dissipated to estate taxes, lawsuits, divorces and general affluenza.

So, learn from the old rich guys who did it right.  Show the Universe you are serious about your business by getting control of your financial future.  Leave your family with a legacy of true family wealth.  If you want to leave the world a better place, even on a small scale, now is the time for you to begin planning your estate.

© 2008 Alexis Martin Neely

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include everything in quotes with it: “Written by Alexis Martin Neely, mom, writer, speaker and Personal Family Lawyer. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and  plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com.”

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